


All We Gotta Do to Live Through This

by Miss_M



Category: Pitch Black (2000), The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dubious Consent, F/M, Rough Sex, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-12 09:38:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12956472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: “Is this the part where you kill me? You son of a bitch.”





	All We Gotta Do to Live Through This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wednesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/gifts).



> I own nothing.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Carolyn’s voice sounded scratchy in her ears, like her throat was full of pebbles. She nearly couldn’t hear herself over the steady, blanketing sound of the rain. “You can’t pilot this thing.”

Riddick watched her from the top of the skiff’s access ramp, his expression inscrutable behind the goggles but for the amused curl to his lip. “You sure about that?”

Carolyn didn’t hurl the bottle full of glowworms at his head, but it was a close thing. “Cut the crap, Riddick! Johns told me you held a shiv to the throat of that prison transport’s pilot for fourteen hours straight. Stop fucking with me.”

Riddick shook his head. In anyone else it would have looked rueful, wry. “Johns was right, for once in his miserable garbage-pail of a life. But it looks like my luck is turning.” 

Carolyn stared at him, blinking in the downpour. Her mouth shaped a _what_ , but she knew better than to voice it. 

Riddick shifted sideways, like he was making room for her to precede him onboard. Such a gent. 

“I figured you’d make it, somehow or other. I admire a strong survival instinct in a woman.”

Carolyn shook her head. “No.” 

“Yes,” Riddick shot back, quick as one of those things hunting them. “Yes. Come on. Here, just take my hand. Make it easy on yourself. You had no choice.”

She reached out with her free hand. Riddick’s outstretched hand looked solid as a stone carving before her, an idol on some backwater planet. Salvation for the taking, _you had no choice_. 

Carolyn pulled back just before her fingers brushed his. She took a step back, then another, away from the access ramp and the bright lights inside the skiff, into the darkness where the only light was the blue glow of the bottle in her hand. 

“No,” she said. “You’re going to come with me, with more lights, and we’ll...”

In the dark behind her and all around her, the creatures screamed. First one, then several, then, it seemed, all of them. The clicks and drawn-out wails and sonar-like screeches filled the air like the planet itself was screaming. 

Carolyn dropped the bottle and covered her ears with her hands. She shut her eyes, her eyelashes soaked with rain, but she could still hear them. Screaming. Confused. Begging for their lives. Never knew what hit them.

Carolyn moaned, bent over double, the rain soaking her, the darkness filling her. She would not cry in front of Riddick. He could kill her, but he would not get that out of her. 

_I’m sorry_ , she thought. Her head echoed with the monsters calling to each other. _I’m sorry, I’m fucking sorry!_

She uncovered her ears, the creatures still ululating all around like some demented congregation at prayer, and she saw again the lit-up interior of the skiff and Riddick, a dark silhouette against it. A piece of the murderous night made sentient before her.

“You stay within my line of sight and keep your hands where I can see them,” Carolyn said in her best command voice. She’d only ever been third in command, only became captain after her ship crashed. “You try anything, _anything_ , and I swear to Christ and Mohammad both, I will dump out all the oxygen and enjoy watching you suck vacuum before we die.”

Riddick smiled. “Whatever you say, captain.”

***

The skiff really was a lifeboat. It had no cryopods, no medbay, no bunks, only one lavatory with no shower, limited storage space.

Carolyn estimated that two people breathing at a normal rate would have enough oxygen for a week, maybe ten days, though the recycled air would start to smell stale after about half that. Two, maybe three days to get them near the shipping lane, then they’d just have to hope their distress signal was picked up by someone willing to divert off course for them, spend time and money on picking up two dumbass lost souls in a leaky little boat.

“How’s it compare to the _Hunter Gratzner_?” Riddick asked, standing uncomfortably close to Carolyn, even given the general lack of space onboard.

Carolyn considered telling him she wasn’t about to teach him the rudiments of her trade so he could decide he didn’t need a pilot after all and slash her throat. She considered it and decided she was too tired and heart-sore for it. 

“They’re both fucking tin cans,” she said. “The company ripped out all the non-essentials from the _Hunter_ to cram in more cryopods.”

“Then you shouldn’t find this baby too much to handle. What do you say, Carolyn? Think you can keep this one afloat?”

He’d sure developed a taste for saying her name a lot. Carolyn wanted to jump on him and bite his throat, tear it out and drink his blood. She didn’t because she had no doubt Riddick would break her spine and leave her just the use of her arms, just enough to work the controls.

“Meteors and comets may knock us out of the sky again, Riddick. Not me.”

She started scrolling through the emergency channels, looking for available bandwidth on which to post their SOS.

She heard Owens’ voice. Distant, scratchy, one more ghost talking to her. “This is an emergency message from merchant vessel _Hunter Gratzner_ on route to the Tangier System with forty commercial passengers on board...”

Carolyn couldn’t prevent the sharp inhale hissing loudly between her teeth. Her ribs hurt like she’d had them broken. She hit the button to keep scrolling much harder than necessary, feeling Riddick’s eyes on her, refusing to look back or give any quarter. 

Riddick had no smart-ass comment, for once. Carolyn doubted it was because he sympathized with her.

***

“You’re gonna have to sleep some time, Carolyn.”

Eighteen hours into the flight, after what Carolyn estimated must have been roughly twelve of the most stressful hours anyone this side of the Severn Asteroid Belt had ever had inflicted on them. Her eyelids felt far too heavy for two skin membranes, and her head was full of sand. 

She blinked hard, once, and stared at the bulkhead just past Riddick’s head. “Yeah, well, so are you. And stop saying my name like that.”

Riddick chuckled, that subterranean rumble. More beast than man, and both equally dangerous to her. “Don’t bet on it. I can go a long time without sleep, or food, or water. Cryo don’t work on me. Hell, I might not even need to use the john until we get picked up.”

If he thought telling her she had no choice but to sleep before he did was reassuring... 

Carolyn tried stretching out her legs where she sat on the floor, her back to the nav console, felt her muscles protest the mistreatment. “If you hurt me or kill me, you kill yourself. You know this.”

“I know it. As to hurting you...”

He squatted in front of her and raised his hand, fingers loose. She tracked his movements with her eyes, anticipating a punch or a grab for her hair, her arm. 

Riddick ran the tip of his index finger down the middle of Carolyn's face, from her hairline, down her nose, over the twin swells of her lips, to the tip of her chin, his finger hovering barely an inch in front of her face. She felt its warmth and the air it displaced against her skin, resisted the urge to inhale through her mouth or lick her lips. She was vaguely surprised to feel warmth coming off Riddick: she knew he was no lizard, and his smell filled the compartment. They both stank of sweat and blood and adrenaline.

“I read people pretty well,” Riddick said, his finger hovering in front of Carolyn’s throat before moving down to the center of her breastbone. “I suspect you could handle just about anything I threw at you. So long as you could hate yourself for it after.”

Carolyn was so hungry, her stomach was a knot of pain. She’d had water since takeoff, but her throat was a desert. There were emergency rations on board, there was water, there was oxygen. 

She didn’t want to be treated like a human being. She wanted to hurt. She’d _left_ them, and she’d have done it again.

She lunged at Riddick. Since she’d been sitting down with her legs sprawled out in front of her, he could easily have checked her lunge, slammed her back against the metal console, cracked her neck in a heartbeat. 

Riddick let her come at him, let her mash her mouth to his and get her hands under the straps of his wife-beater and pull. The fabric stretched but didn’t tear. 

Carolyn made a frustrated noise, her tongue in Riddick’s mouth. The second she moved her hands, to get leverage on his body and get closer to him, push him back and straddle him, he had her on her back on the metal floor, one hand wrapped around her neck, his legs pressing hers down. He was _heavy_ , and while his hand wasn’t squeezing her throat, Carolyn still had trouble breathing. Maybe she’d miscalculated how much fresh air they had. Maybe they’d use it all up straight away…

“You wanna play?” Riddick whispered. It sounded like a big cat making nice before it ripped its prey to bits. “We can play.”

Carolyn started to reply, had to stop and swallow, her dry throat working within the vise of Riddick’s hand. “What’re you waiting for?” she managed at last. 

Riddick’s smile was so predatory, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he had bitten into her, right then and there. 

He moved till he was squatting astride her chest, still holding her throat with one hand while he undid his pants with the other. Carolyn’s arms and legs were free, but she didn’t move a finger.

“Open,” he said, and she did. Let him shove himself down her dry throat, work himself in and out of her mouth till he was fully hard, smothering her with his crotch every time he pushed down. 

Riddick laughed when she grazed him with her teeth, not intentionally – he was skullfucking her too roughly for her to prevent it – though hearing his laugh made her wish she had done it on purpose. His eyes reflected the console lights, burning red in his skull, and his nostrils flared as he watched her choke him down.

Carolyn sucked in a huge breath when Riddick pulled out, released her throat, and stood up. She was left spread-eagled on the floor, her lips burning, her stomach and throat hurting. Riddick looked down at her, down the length of his massive body, his balls and prick hanging out of his unbuttoned fly. 

“On your knees. Face down on the floor,” he said. 

“Fuck you,” Carolyn breathed, but she was scrabbling at the metal wire-mesh beneath her, twisting sideways, trying to roll over.

Not quickly enough – Riddick’s boot nudged her ribs, a promise of real pain if she didn’t play along. 

She didn’t hurry because she lacked the strength for it, and the anticipated kick never came. Riddick’s knees hit the metal floor behind her, like he didn’t feel any pain, and he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her backward and up, easy as a rag doll, till she was kneeling, her cheek resting on the floor.

Carolyn closed her eyes as Riddick yanked her pants down, pressed his thighs to her ass, and shoved inside her. She whimpered, too exhausted to swallow it, too far gone to deny him any response, as he gripped her hips and yanked her back into his thrusts, grunting through his nose like he was still humping those goddamn power cells over rough terrain. Carolyn got one of her hands under her cheek, so the mesh floor tore at her palm, not her face, and let him pound her. 

She had no reserves left to hold back even the moan which escaped her when Riddick pushed one of his hands between her legs and rubbed her clit roughly with a calloused finger. Bastard slowed down when he heard her moaning, flicked her clit almost gently, then teased it fast, till her thighs trembled and her breath was a high, thin stutter of sound. Carolyn felt herself getting wet, felt him slide smoothly in and out of her. Her head rose off the floor as she arched her back, her eyes closed and her breasts pressed to the floor, gripping the metal mesh with bruised fingers. She moaned steadily as Riddick stopped fingering her and pulled her even harder into him, his balls slapping her clit.

“I should assfuck you. Maybe later.”

“Get a taste for it in the slam?” Carolyn managed, she had no idea how. She had no breath or wits left.

Riddick made a noise like a stillborn laugh and forced his finger into her ass, didn’t even lick it, not that she’d expected it. Carolyn didn’t want to come, but she had no energy left to deny herself anything. _So long as you can hate yourself for it._ She shook and moaned helplessly in Riddick’s grip, pushing back onto his dick and finger, her bruised hands and knees nexuses of pain.

She was utterly unsurprised when Riddick kept at it till she was raw and really hurting, then came as long and hard as, she supposed, only a man who hadn’t seen daylight in years in some hellhole of a slam could. Balls deep? Hell. Carolyn felt like he was pouring all of his blood and saliva and semen into her, squeezing her hips and slamming her back and back again onto his dick, till he pulled out of her and sprawled out next to her on the floor. 

Carolyn didn’t turn her head to look at him, but she heard him thud down onto the floor, imagined him dying beside her. She imagined him dead. Her cunt _ached_. Everything ached. 

“Is this the part where you kill me? You son of a bitch,” she squeezed out through her bruised larynx.

“We both got what we wanted, now shut the fuck up and go to sleep, Carolyn.” He sounded out of breath. Carolyn thrilled at it, like an orgasm aftershock, even as she trembled in anger at the humanity of it.

***

The beacon beeping woke her up. By the time Carolyn had staggered up, rubbing her eyes with her hands and nearly tripping over her own pants, entangled around her left ankle, Riddick was bent over the nav console, watching the readout.

His back was to her. She could have bashed his skull in before he turned, probably. She clocked a fire extinguisher and a full canteen close to hand. 

She stood motionless, sticky, and half-naked, her arms feeling too heavy to lift, till Riddick straightened, big as a mountain in the narrow cabin, and glanced at her over his shoulder. He stank, and he’d missed a loop while buckling his belt. She saw a shiv handle sticking out of his pants, wondered if it had been there while he’d fucked her.

“Ship picked up your distress beacon,” Riddick said, watching her like he knew what she was thinking – that she would never get to the shiv fast enough. “They’re detouring to take us with them to New Mecca.”

“Alhamdulillah,” Carolyn muttered and sat down on the floor, the wire mesh very cold under her naked buttocks. “I could tell them who you are. Safest course of action would be...”

“You wouldn't breathe a word.” His eyes were on her, opaque with reflected light. “Because you don’t wanna be answering questions about how only you got off that rock with me, _captain_.”

He was right. As usual. She would have let Riddick kill her, if she’d been able to provoke him, but she could not see herself winding up in the slam. Would not see herself there.

Carolyn leaned her head back against the bulkhead and closed her eyes. She was thirsty and hungry and bone-tired and fairly certain she wouldn’t want a man inside her ever again. She heard, almost saw projected onto the insides of her eyelids, as Riddick moved – the whisper of his feet next to her, the warmth and stench of his body.

His voice, just above her head. His breath stirring her hair. “You survived, Carolyn. Now live with it.”

Carolyn squeezed her eyes and lips shut, but she couldn’t stop the tears which began to leak out or the thin, ugly whine clawing up her throat. Her whole body shook with the sobs she tried and failed to strangle, as she clutched her knees to her chest and let her grief and guilt lash her. 

Riddick picked up the canteen off the floor, poured water down his throat and over his head without offering her any, his knee brushing Carolyn’s trembling shoulder as he stood beside her. The water droplets off his body spattered her. 

Riddick capped the canteen and dropped it on the metal floor, narrowly missing Carolyn, the impact followed by the slosh of several mouthfuls still inside. Still hiccupping with tears, Carolyn picked it up, unscrewed the lid, and brought the canteen to her lips, the sweet, slightly gritty water mixing with the tears flowing into her mouth. She tilted her head back, and she drank deeply, wanting more, dying of thirst.

“Key in an acknowledgment,” Carolyn said when she’d sucked the canteen dry. Riddick was back at the console, his back to her, but she knew he heard her. “Once they’re in range, it’s best I talk to them.”

She ignored his amused ‘yes, ma’am’ as she heaved herself up, leaning against the bulkhead, pulled her pants off and carried them with her into the lavatory. She was bursting for a piss, and the crew of the rescue ship should see her moderately clean and with it, if also bruised, underslept, traumatized, starving, and fucked to within an inch of her life. 

Carolyn ran tap water over her bruised and aching hand, passed her wet hands over her face, armpits, cunt. She had left people to die so she could live. She was the captain. She would answer questions about the fate of the _Hunter Gratzner_ and lie like a fucking champ. After light-averse, echolocating monsters and the man waiting for her on the other side of the lavatory door, she couldn’t imagine the universe had any worse horrors to throw at her.

Goddamn Riddick really had known her from the start.


End file.
